His first and only love, which ended before it had time to blossom,
wrapt him closely in sad and sweet reveries, usually in the evenings.
Five years earlier he had met a young girl who left an indelible
impression upon him. She was pale, gentle, slender, with blue eyes, and
fair wavy hair. She almost seemed to him not to belong to this earth,
but was like a creature of air and mist, blown for a brief moment by
fate into the city turmoil. Her movements were slow; her gentle, clear
voice was soft, like the murmur of a brook purling over stones.
Saksaoolov, whether by chance or not, saw her always in a white dress.
The impression of white had become inseparable from his thought of her.
Her very name, Tamar, suggested to him something as white as the snow
on the mountain tops.
He began to visit her at the house of her parents. More than once he
had resolved to say to her those words which bind human fates together.
But she never let him go on; she would always grow frightened and shy,
and she would rise and leave him. What frightened her? Saksaoolov read
signs of virgin love in her face; her eyes grew brighter when he
entered, and a light flush suffused her cheeks.
But one never-to-be-forgotten day she listened to him. It was in the
early spring. The ice on the river was gone, and the trees were covered
with a soft green veil. Tamar and Saksaoolov were sitting before the
window in the city house, and looking out on the Niva. He spoke,
scarcely knowing what he said, but his words were both gentle and
terrible to her. She grew pale, smiled vaguely, and rose. Her slender
hand trembled on the carved top of the chair.
“To-morrow,” Tamar said quietly, and went out.
Saksaoolov gazed with intense feeling toward the door behind which
Tamar had disappeared. His head was in a whirl. His eye fell upon a
sprig of white lilac; he picked it up almost absently, and left without
bidding his hosts good-bye.
He could not sleep that night. He stood at the window and looked out
into the far-stretching streets, at first dark, then lighter at dawn;
he smiled and pressed the sprig of lilac between his fingers. When it
grew light he noticed that the floor of the room was strewn with white
petals of lilac. This seemed both curious and of happy omen to
Saksaoolov. He felt the cool of the breeze on his heated face. He took
a bath and he felt refreshed. Then he went to Tamar.
They told him that she was ill, that she had caught a cold somewhere.
And Saksaoolov never saw her again; she died within two weeks. He did
not go to her funeral. Her death left him quite calm, and he no longer
knew whether he had loved her or whether it was a short, passing
fascination.
He mused about her sometimes in the evening; but he gradually learned
to forget her; and Saksaoolov had no portrait of her. But after a few
years—more precisely, only a year ago—in the spring, upon seeing a
sprig of lilac sadly out of place among rich eatables in a restaurant
window, he remembered Tamar. And from that time on he loved to think of
Tamar again during the evenings.
Sometimes, as he fell into a light sleep, he dreamt that Tamar came to
him, sat opposite him, and looked at him with unaverted, fond eyes; and
that she had something to tell him. And it was painful to feel Tamar’s
expectant glance upon him, and not know what she wanted of him.
Now, leaving the Gorodischevs, he thought timidly: “She will come to
give me the kiss of Easter.”
A feeling of fear and loneliness took hold of him with such intensity
that the idea came to him: “Perhaps it would be well to marry so as not
to be alone on holy, mysterious nights.”
He thought of Valeria Mikhailovna, the Gorodischev girl. She was by no
means a beauty, but she was always dressed becomingly to set off her
looks. She apparently liked him, and was not likely to reject him if he
asked her.
The throng and din in the street distracted him and his usual somewhat
ironic mood swayed his thoughts of the Gorodischev girl. Could he prove
false to Tamar’s memory for any one else? Everything in the world
seemed so paltry to him that he wished no one but Tamar to give him the
kiss of Easter.
“But,” thought he, “she will again look at me with expectancy. White,
gentle Tamar, what does she want? Will her gentle lips kiss me?”